Monday, April 30, 2012

Pierre Moreau was a graduate of Berklee in Boston (what a source of genius that place is!) as well as McGill in Montreal where he studied composition and jazz. He is or was the primary composer in the famed Quebec group L'Engoulevent, as well, he composed music for children, soundtracks for film (Race de Batard), for theatre (La Scouine), and this incredible lost album of solo piano compositions that travel everywhere from intense to reflective, with an astonishing palette of colours.

Here we have the full range of his creative talents on display, with some gentle songs, quasi-atonal material (Cinquieme), playful passages (Cascade), and the plucked-strings style of piano that one often hears in avant-garde from this period in time. This is not at all like fellow Canadian Andre Gagnon's simplistic classical style, all the education of a university degree is brought to bear to be distilled in the complex harmonies and dissonances like a beautifully deep barolo. As I've said so many times before, this music, progressive rock, goes farther than anything the human mind has ever created before or has since.

It is highly unfair that the impressive works in this record have been lost to time. Like so many others, I would love to let him understand how much I love his work, especially in the master prog-folk band L'engoulevent.